In my experience the CTO got to be CTO because they’re friends with the CEO, the board, etc, rather than their own technical ability being superior than the sen

In my experience the CTO got to be CTO because they’re friends with the CEO, the board, etc, rather than their own technical ability being superior than the seniors/leads under them. And that goes for me too, when I was CTO. It’s a position, it doesn’t have any inherent guarantee of ability to avoid optimising the irrelevant: some will, some won’t.